What to do with all those eggs? A tutorial of sorts.

What can you do with all of those left over hard boiled Easter eggs? You can oxidize your sterling silver jewelry! I love the look of oxidized sterling silver jewelry when it’s done right. The look is less glossy and more organic.

Peel a hard boiled egg or three depending on the amount of silver you would like to oxidize.

Chop it up and place it in a plastic bag along with the pieces you wish to oxidize.

Allow it to remain in the bag and periodically give it a shake. Sometimes the pieces oxidize pretty quickly and sometimes it takes a while, in the photo above the round beads oxidized quickly and the clasps took overnight, making sure your egg is hot may quicken the process. You can keep your eye on your pieces until it reaches an oxidized state that you are happy with… I allow mine to get really black.

Pour it out onto a paper towel, take out your pieces, toss the egg and give the sterling a good soaking with water and dish liquid.

Here’s how it looks after it’s been cleaned… not very attractive but I’m not done, yet.

With a very fine, 600 grit sandpaper (will scratch the surface slightly) or 0000 steel wool I rub off some of the oxidization leaving me with a very organic look to the sterling silver.

Oxidized pieces that have been rubbed off on left, untreated pieces on right.

Sometimes jewelry requires the glossy, shiny look of sterling. Like this piece.

But other times it requires something a bit more organic.

Here is a clasp that is pictured in the egg above before being oxidized.

And here it is with the oxidization rubbed off, it’s subtle but without the glaring shininess as seen above.

You can also turn this into a science project for kids and use pennies instead of sterling silver.

4 thoughts on “What to do with all those eggs? A tutorial of sorts.”

I love your idea! I never thought of using it this way : )
It reminds me of when my mom used to wrap boiled egg and a silver chain in a cloth and put it on her eyes to help with dark circles. Sometimes the chain came out in not only black, but blue, red, yellow or green as well.